Tangle - The Sunday Podcast: Isaac and Ari talk about SOTU bets, Simon Rosenberg, and Trump coverage still sucks.

Episode Date: March 24, 2024

On today’s podcast, Isaac and Ari talk about their State of the Union bets, NCAA brackets and Caitlin Clark, Simon Rosenberg - the Democratic strategist and why I can't stop reading him, where we were in March of 2020 and why the media coverage of Trump still sucks. Plus, as always, our Airing of Grievances.You can watch our latest YouTube video, The Zionist Case for a Ceasefire, here.On Sunday, we released Episode 1 of our first ever limited podcast series: The Undecideds. We're following five voters — all Tangle readers — who are undecided about who they are going to vote for in the 2024 election. In Episode 1, we introduce you to those voters.Today’s clickables: State of the Union bets settled (2:09), NCAA brackets (9:17), Simon Rosenberg (12:22), Revisiting March 2020 (22:48), Trump quote out of context (36:26), The Airing of Grievances (53:16)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Last week, we released more tickets to our New York City event on April 17th, and they got gobbled up quickly. Our general admission tickets are now sold out; but we still have some VIP seats left for purchase. Get them here. Tangle is looking for a part-time intern to work as an assistant to our YouTube and podcast producer. This is a part-time, paid position that would be ideal for a college student or recent college graduate looking to get real-world deadline experience in the industry. Applicants should have: Proficiency in Adobe Premiere — After Effects a plus. Minimum of one year of video editing (Adobe Premiere) Minimum of one year of audio editing and mixing (Any DAW) Good organizational and communication skills Understanding of composition and aesthetic choices Self-sufficiency in solving technical problems Proficiency in color grading and vertical video formatting (preferred, not required)To apply, email your resume and a few paragraphs about why you are applying to [e-mail] and [e-mail] with the subject line "Editor opening"The job listing is posted here. Preference will be given to candidates in the greater Philadelphia area. Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

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Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. CBC News. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to

your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. Coming up, our State of the Union bets, NCAA bracket, Caitlin Clark, a little basketball talk, Simon Rosenberg, the Democratic strategist, and why I can't stop reading him, where we were in March of 2020, and why the media coverage of Trump still sucks. Plus, you get to listen to Ari complain about his taxes for a few minutes.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, here with our managing editor and my handy co-host, Ari Weitzman. How's it going, Isaac? You know, you know, today's been, uh, I'm getting out of here. I'm, I'm hitting the road to go to upstate New York for a wedding in the next few hours. And it's amazing what losing two hours of your day does to you or does to me, I should say. Um, I feel incredibly disrupted and rushed. And, uh, this is the thing I don't want to rush. I want to take my time here and settle in. So I'm fighting the instinct to run to my inbox and get a bunch of

stuff done that's probably not as important as I think it is. It's going to take the amount of time it takes. You set an hour to talk to me and by God, you're going to take that hour and you're going to talk to me. I'm going to take that hour and I'm going to talk. Talk about politics and maybe Dune comes up again. We'll see what happens. Who knows? I did get a couple emails from people saying that we should review Dune together on the podcast. I cannot imagine that that audience is very big. That's not interesting.

Yeah, who wants to hear us talk about Dune? But the people who did write in and say that were extremely enthusiastic about it. Respect. I saw Dune now. I thought it was incredible. I shared Ari's sentiments about it. Maybe we can go more in depth some other time. Okay, we have some unfinished business we got to talk about. So we ended up not recording a Sunday pod last week because we debuted our new podcast series, The Undecideds, which if you have not listened to that episode, please scroll back a few episodes and go listen to it. We're super excited about this series. We're going to keep sort of tinkering with it and playing with it, but I think it's

got a lot of potential and I'm really excited about the folks we're following. it and playing with it, but I think it's got a lot of potential and I'm really excited about the folks we're following. And since we debuted that, we didn't record a podcast. So we didn't talk about our State of the Union bets we made, which were pretty fun. I think we need to settle up on those. So we're going to go back. The conversation we had was heading into the State of the Union, We're going to go back. The conversation we had was heading into the State of the Union, whether Biden would go over under one hour, whether – and Ari said under and I said over – whether he mentions Trump by name, yes or no, whether he went over under two and a half mentions of Russia, which I thought was pretty interesting. And then we talked about some of the percentage odds or the betting odds, I should say, on what would be the most mentions. And the number one was democracy at minus 120. And January 6th was plus 350. That was the second most. And MAGA was plus 400. That was the second most and MAGA was plus 400. So we should go through these really

quick. Let's start with the Trump mention because that one was kind of interesting. Do you remember what did you take? You took yes or no? There's no way about this. No two ways about this. I got trounced here. So I said no on the Trump mention or I said yes. Sorry. I said yes on the Trump mention, or I said yes, sorry. I said yes on the Trump mention. I thought it was going to be something that slipped out as like, this is something that people who support Trump are saying. And I think Biden's been really, really consistent about saying my predecessor or the other guy sometimes, but I thought that this would be a moment where he would name him. And I retrospectively can't believe I said that. Just incredibly wrong,

amazingly wrong. And I deserve to be called wrong. Yeah. I mean, I was definitely coming from, my educated guess was just based on the kind of state of the union tradition how you know so many people would feel that that was totally outlandish for him to name by name but he did say his he referred to his predecessor 13 times in the speech which um was not what anybody had you know there was no betting money on that being the most used word. And I think, how many predecessors are worth one Trump? I'm not really sure, but I would say maybe three or four. That's kind, but the conversion rate is zero. It was just a matter of whether or not he named him, because I think that was the big question. It was the thing that he was consistent in not doing,

and he didn't do it. Right. And he leaned in really hard on talking about him and referring to him, but did not name him. The betters had democracy as the most used word, which I believe was correct. I mean, predecessor obviously took the cake, but of the sort of run-of-the-mill words that we were maybe expecting, he did say democracy 11 times in the speech. So I think a weird loss to take the L to the word predecessor, but he didn't mention January 6th or Putin or MAGA nearly close to as many times as that. The other one was the Russia mentions over-under two and a half. And I thought, didn't you get me on this one? This was my one win and not by a whole lot, but I will say the over under was already pretty low. So a win here is always going to be a small margin win. And also it was a win kind of the

way I expected it to be. I was expecting mentions of Putin and some of Russians maybe. And that's exactly what we got. We got some talk of Putin and one mention of Russia, but no naming of Russia, Russia, Russia. Yeah, this was a tough way to lose the sweep for me because he referenced Putin seven times. He said the word Russia once and he said Russians twice, referring to the people the Russians were holding hostage, like Evan Gershkovich, the journalist from the Wall Street Journal. So I was very close to getting that one too. Two and a half turned out to be a great line. I mean, Russia, Russians, I don't know how Vegas would count that. I assume that's a definite under, but they were right there. So I think we should maybe start doing this a little more when we have some big political events coming.

I kind of like the faux gambling predictive. I mean, we have so many elections, primaries coming up, and then the actual 2024 election. We should do one episode that's just like a total straight up prediction, betting style, which way every state's going to go, what the margin's going to be. I'm sure there'll be a lot of data out there. I think that'd be kind of fun and maybe a lighthearted way to address whatever ends up happening to our country in November. Right. The stakes are not going to be fun to a lot of the more ardent partisans on either side, but I think that's kind of why you're listening to Tango in the first place, which is to try to

turn the temperature down. Not necessarily to make a game out of democracy, as it were, but to just make sure we're keeping in mind that it's probably not going to be the case that the future of the world depends on what you do in November. Not to diminish the importance of voting, please vote, but I do think it would be good to have something that kind of gets into the issues with a little bit more of a light tone, also in a way that allows us to engage our more degenerate sides and get that, you know, a healthy outlet for that would be good. I think today was a good example of how that can bleed into the work when I mentioned that we should, in the extra section, have a link to the brackets for March Madness, which starts today as we're

recording on Thursday. And your rebuttal was, it starts at 1230, so it's not going to matter. People have already made their bets. I wasn't talking about betting at all. It was just the way that you'd assumed, well, if we're talking about sports and March Madness, of course, you mean gambling. Yeah. I barely got a bracket in before the start of the NCAA tournament. Something about it has kind of lost its allure for me. I can't really say. I remember like five years ago, I would get invited to four different groups that were doing March Madness brackets or something. This year, I literally didn't get invited to do a single bracket. And so I just created one and sent it out to a few friends this morning. So I was like, this would end a 20 year streak of me having a bracket. But I remember printing out the NCAA

brackets like in middle school and taking them into class and trying to get updates on the games. And now, I don't know, I feel like there's too many different ways to gamble. And it's kind of losing the spice that it used to have, which is really sad. Yeah, I think that's it exactly. Sports betting is so prevalent that you aren't looking forward to this one specific time when you do it because you do it all the time already. So it's maybe a bit sad, but as a better, I don't touch the bracket. I think it's fun to watch. Single elimination tournaments are really, really interesting, but it's just so random. It's a loss factory. I wouldn't even play with it.

It's a horrible, the absolute worst sport to bet on is college basketball. play with it. It's a horrible, absolute worst sport to bet on is college basketball. Also, another kind of interesting twist this year, which I don't want to get too off the rails here, but maybe worth mentioning since we're touching it, is that the most important and well-known player in college basketball is a woman this year. It's Kaitlyn Clark, who's... The New York Times just did a whole daily episode on her, which if anything was belated. But it was kind of fascinating to hear them talk about it because it's sort of low-key the story of March Madness is that the most... I mean, I could name like five college basketball players and none of them are even remotely

close to the household name she is now. And it's sort of like the most famous college basketball player is a woman. And she's going to drive an unbelievable amount of attention to the NCAA women's tournament, which is really cool. And yeah, it's just like there's a shift happening in more ways than one that I think has made the men's bracket a little bit less interesting than it usually is. That kind of just occurred to me today when I realized I barely even knew the tournament was starting. I think that's fair. I think it's also a good idea to shift topics back into politics as we

were talking about betting and prognosticating, not to usher Caitlin Clark out the door too much. Very smooth transition. We've talked about her in the Sunday. She's accomplished an incredible amount in her career. Go Hawkeyes. All that. All right. Well, let's get back to it then. We'll stay in the numbers world and talk a little bit about some recent national polling. I think this is maybe an understated story, I would say. I don't want to say... I hate endorsing certain people because it comes with all this baggage, especially endorsing someone like this. Simon Rosenberg, the Democratic strategist who is as partisan as they come, is quickly becoming a must-read for me.

I think he is offering a narrative about the 2024 election that I'm not finding anywhere, that I find challenges a lot of my own priors and makes me think really hard. We've had Simon on the show. I'm very proud to say we were sort of ahead of the curve. Simon Rosenberg is now very, very well known in the political world because he predicted the 2022 midterms basically exactly right. And when everybody was calling for a red wave, he was saying Democrats are winning on all the fundamentals and they're going to have a really good night. And they did. And before the midterms, we cited him, I cited him frequently in my take in Tangle newsletters

and podcasts as somebody who I was keeping an eye on because I found his arguments really convincing. And then after everything happened basically the way he said it would, we brought Simon on the Tangle podcast. So this was, you know, whatever, back in 2022, I think December or something, if you want to go back and find that episode. And he was super interesting to talk to. Again, I mean, he worked for the Clinton administration. He's an advisor to Biden's campaign. I'm not endorsing him as somebody who's like open-minded, you know, moderate, whatever. He is

a democratic strategist, partisan, but he's been right about a lot of stuff. And now he's on Ezra Klein's podcast. He's getting interviewed by the New York Times all the time. I'm seeing him on CNN and MSNBC, and he's everywhere all of a sudden. His name is just becoming a name, which has been cool to see, knowing him for the last few years and watching that happen. And he writes this newsletter that is for other Democrats that I read that is basically a, it's called Hopium Chronicles, and it's all this stuff about why people should be optimistic. And he just writes about Biden and writes about the trends in the election in a way that I don't see anywhere else. And one of the things that he just pointed out is that the last six big national polls all show Joe Biden

running ahead of Donald Trump since the State of the Union address, which is fascinating. And what Simon said three or four months ago when the first New York Times poll came out showing Biden in a really weak position was that the moment that this election got clarified and it was Trump versus Biden, that Biden was going to take a lead. So The Economist has Biden ahead 44 to 43. Main Street FAU did a poll, Biden ahead 47,45. Morning Consult, Biden ahead 44-43. Public Policy Research, Biden ahead 46-45. Ipsos Reuters, Biden ahead 50-48. Civics, Biden ahead 45-44. Obviously, these are all really thin margins, but the Economist poll average has Biden one point ahead of Trump now. There is something that's changing

here that I don't think maybe enough people are talking about post-Trump winning the nomination and kind of post-state of the union. And I have been saying that the Democratic Party is really strong. I think stronger than the Republican Party is right now in terms of a campaign operation, I think stronger than the Republican Party is right now in terms of a campaign operation, in terms of their divisions, in terms of just their overall organization. From a pure, not a policy perspective, a political perspective, I think they are stronger. And I think he might be onto something, that Biden is actually in kind of a commanding position. I'd be kind of curious to hear how you view some of that stuff.

I don't know how much of it you've gotten a chance to read. I know I send you some of his stuff here and there, but I find it very compelling. Yeah, I think Simon's position now as a person that people go to in order to hear his position is earned because he's a person who's been right. So regardless of if you're partisan, if you're correct, that's what people want to hear is the opinion of a person who's predictably right. Party. And before I ever worked with Tangle, I think before you even started Tangle, I would ask him for what he knows about the upcoming elections and polling, not because I was endorsing the Republican Party, but because they were right. Like their pollsters were just more correct. They were right with advancing Trump. They won 2016. They had their finger on the pulse of something. And that's sort of shifted. It shifted post Roe. I think we've talked a lot about that, about abortion. And I think it shifted post

Trump in general. We see this big trend of candidates that are tied to Trump are the ones that are underperforming the most, and we don't have to rehash that. I think that's part of what Simon Rosenberg's pitching is. You shouldn't undercount the amount to which undecided voters are turned off by Trump. They might not like Biden. They might not like a lot of democratic policies, but he's just not a great bridge builder. And I would cast my lot in with Simon Rosenberg now. I think getting ahead of us doing a big election special, the closer we get to it, I think I would be ready to say I'm convinced that Biden's going to win in November. And I think it's a lot of the reasons that he talks about. And I'll just name a couple. So two big things. One is Israel and Palestine. And the second is abortion. So starting with abortion, since it's easiest, it's just a winning platform. And it's something Democrats can very, very much campaign on in a more convincing way than Republicans.

Even if Trump says tomorrow, I'm pro-choice, I don't think it's going to convince the people that have already said they want to vote with Democrats because of access to reproductive care. On the other hand, Israel and Palestine, specifically states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania. But let's put the microscope over Michigan for a second, where that big uncommitted push was on Palestine. Once it was clarified that we're seeing Trump versus Biden, I don't think there's a single voter that decided to push themselves uncommitted in that election who's going to tip their vote towards Trump. I just don't see that happening. And I think the closer we get to the election, when those choices become more and more clear, fewer and fewer of them are going to decide that being on the sidelines is the right call.

If there are people who are interested enough to show up in the primaries and cast a ballot in the way to make their voices heard. I think they're going to make the decision not to back Biden necessarily in November, but to go against Trump. And I think if Biden picks up Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, if he picks up all three of those states, that's the election. It's over. That gives 270 with the states that we expect them to retain. And I think that's enough. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break.

break. It's interesting. I totally agree about the Israel stuff. I think that those people come back to the Democratic base when it's time, and especially when it becomes clear it's Trump. And they get to hear what Trump says his plan is for Israel and Gaza, which is, you know, if they think that Joe Biden is giving Israel too much latitude, they're going to have a rude awakening when they hear Donald Trump's, you know, stump speech on what should happen in Israel. So that's definitely true. I agree about the abortion issue. I mean, we've written about this. I think abortion is pretty much, to me, if I had to pick one single issue that explains the run of election wins that Democrats have had since 2022, it's the fall of Roe v. Wade and abortion. So I'm with you on that. of my head if I had to bet the house, I would put it on Biden right now, but I'd be really, really nervous. I would be really, really nervous. I mean, I really do truly believe it's a coin flip despite some of those national polls I just read. I think Trump has an incredible strength on the issue of immigration. I think economic sentiment is getting better, but it needs to

keep improving if Biden wants to win. And I think there's going to be a reality of the State of the Union Biden that I thought looked pretty focused and energized and not as old and and not as kind of old and stumbly and garbled as he usually is, that guy has to show up consistently as a contrast to Trump for the next seven or eight months, or he's not going to win. I'm not convinced at all he's capable of doing that. And I hope to God we get at least one debate where we can see them actually talk across each other. Not that the others have been that useful, but I think we deserve it. And if they don't debate, it'll set a really terrible precedent for presidential elections. So Biden's going to have to survive that. I mean, I think Trump is, you know,

I guess there's no way to say objectively, but subjectively, I think Trump is at an advantage on stage right now. And I'm not sure there's a lot of people even in Biden's camp who would disagree with that. So all this is to say, it's March of 2020 and so much can change between now and then. I actually, you know, I was expecting to sort of get into some of this, some of where we are and what you thought, you know, where you thought Biden kind of sat. And so I did a little experiment and just went into, you know, Google, and just went into Google News and set a timeframe for February 4th, 2020 to March 2020, and just searched Biden's name and Biden in polls to just see what we were talking about at that point. Equidistance from election day as we are right now. Just very curious about where we would be. Without looking, I'd be curious to hear what kind of headlines you think maybe, what kind of stories you think were being discussed this distance out from the election in 2020. getting surprise questions on you, so you're turning the tables. So this would have been just after Super Tuesday in 2020. Biden, at that point, had lynched the Democratic nomination,

it seemed, or I think we knew at that point, right? You're making this face. He was close. Just barely. He was close. I think, if I'm, maybe this is just my bias and the lens through which news reports are being discussed at the time. But I think there's a lot of discussion about the way that Biden was playing with black voters and whether or not that turnout would be enough to help him win the general election. There was a lot of talk about COVID. Still a ton of talk about covid like that was 2020 i don't know how much that relates to biden per se but i think he was probably campaigning more against trump's positions on the pandemic at the time and so i wouldn't be surprised to see some of that tied in, but I'm just trying to back guess and estimate. I don't really remember what it was.

You touched a number of good results. So March 20th, so almost to the day, we're recording this on March 21st. And I didn't set the time range to March 21st. I set it up to March 20th. On this day, March 20th, the second result is an NBC News headline saying, Biden trashes Trump over coronavirus response. Step up and do your job, Mr. President. So you got that. And then the third one down is another NBC story that is a progressive group's analysis on why Stacey Abrams would be Biden's best choice for vice president. And it's all about his attempts effectively to court the black vote

and why he should be focused on doing that in Georgia. So that's two for two. Some other stuff that was happening around this time, just to give people a perspective of how far out we are from the election, because I think people forget how much happens between now and November. Tulsi Gabbard on March 19th, 2020 had just dropped out of the Democratic primary. So she had literally just dropped out, ended her White House bid and endorsed Biden on March 19th, House bid and endorse Biden on March 19th, 2020. And so that just gives you a sense of where they were. When I searched Biden swing state polls March 2020 and put that range in, there was a CNN poll from March 9th proclaiming that Biden had now officially had a double-digit lead over Bernie Sanders. And a couple of weeks before,

there was another poll showing that Biden had just reclaimed a national lead over Bernie Sanders. So around this time in 2020, Biden had just become the favorite, basically, in a lot of polling. And then he had the big Super Tuesday, won South Carolina and stuff that sort of catapulted his campaign. March 19th, there was an NBC News opinion poll saying that Bernie Sanders should suspend his 2020 presidential campaign and help Biden beat Trump. So the calls for Bernie to drop out were kind of just sort of touching us for the first time. It was like, that was the new thing was this primary looks to be over and Sanders should drop out. Some other interesting headlines that I came across that were very fascinating to me. One was Biden urging every CEO in America to commit to no stock

buybacks for a year. And we know now at his State of the Union, he was proposing quadrupling the stock buyback tax. There was another one I saw. Oh, where was this? It was Biden promises no new oil drilling if he becomes the president. So that was, I would say, not a promise he kept. That was sort of a, you know, we have record oil production, and he's kind of greenlighting a bunch of drilling and stuff all over the world. But, you know, interesting to see that that was sort of, he was kind of playing, I think,

a little bit to some of the Bernie supporters at that time. So that was March 2020. March 3rd, that was March 2020. March 3rd, 2020, New York Times, Biden revives campaign winning nine states. I mean, this was like, we were almost just getting started in a lot of ways or just coming to the realization that Biden might actually be the nominee. And everybody was freaking out about Bernie Sanders staying in the race. So we are a very, very long way away from November. And I think it's just worth emphasizing that so many things are going to happen between now and then that we can't even possibly predict that, you know, in a lot of respects, we're sort of shooting in the dark. This is a little different this year because the race is totally clarified and all the challengers have dropped out.

And I think that's important to note. But yeah, it was an interesting gut check for me to read some of those headlines and see where we were at this time in the election in 2020. For sure. And I think it is important that this year we know who the candidates are. It's a good reminder that that's not normal to have that known by January and then confirmed by Super Tuesday. So that's helpful context. is a better understanding of what the weaknesses are and where each candidate is going to beat their opponent up with their weakness for the next six, seven, eight months. And in that regard, I think it gives us an idea of what we can try to look for. And I think you were right with your, I guess we can call them big three things that Biden's going to have to manage,

which are immigration, the economy, and stories about his age. Of those three, I think the stories about his age are the biggest risk. Because immigration, I think Republicans are in a bit of a bind right now, because I think the pushback to that may have already crescendoed. Not necessarily that there's a peak that we've seen in the surge at the border, but just that Democrats have acknowledged that something has to change. Biden is pushing proposals for legislation, and Republicans will either be enacting changes that Democrats want, or they'll be blocking changes that Biden's pushing for. And that's a hard line to toe. On the economy, that's obviously a huge question mark. Things can change in ways that we can't anticipate. But if things continue along current projections, we have a couple more rate cuts between now and the election that only will indicate a furtherance of a trend that is good for what Biden's selling and can get the

economy out of headlines, which if you're an incumbent, the economy being out of headlines is where you want it. And the third thing is his age. And that's where it's the biggest controllable for him, how he appears. So that's a plus, but it's also the biggest question mark i mean we've seen him look bad heading up it's also the biggest it's also the biggest uncontrollable for him i mean he like i agree he can control in some sense how he looks but in other senses it's it's like he's fighting gravity you know um which is kind of interesting. How he presents himself, obviously, he has control over, I guess you would argue in some sense, but I'm sure some people would say he has no control over it.

And that's the whole point. That's the whole issue, you know? It'll be interesting to see what a debate looks like. I fully agree. We need to have a debate. We just have to have a debate between two candidates. agree we need to have a debate. Like we just have to have a debate between two candidates. And I don't know if he ends up looking bad in a debate with Trump.

I think expectations are low enough. And Trump is so... Anywhere, anytime. Police have warned the protesters repeatedly, get back. CBC News brings the story to you as it happens. Hundreds of wildfires are burning. Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canadians. This situation has changed very quickly. Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. CBC News. Stay in the know. CBC News. Witness to a crime? Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight.

Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Polarizing that Biden just showing up and saying, and doing what he did four years ago of just not addressing Trump and saying, look what he's saying. This is, this stuff isn't helpful. Like that message works for a lot of people. And I think that's all he needs to do. So really quick, and then we'll get out of the time capsule. Just while you're talking, I was climbing back in the Tangle archives to 2020 to sort of see what we were covering. I did not get to March yet, but this will be my last time hammering the point of how much is going to happen leading up to this election. So on September 30th, 2020, so not technically October 1st, but right there, we had the first debate between Trump and Biden. So we're now six weeks out from the election, not even five to six weeks out from the election. And we just had the first debate.

Then October 2nd, in Tangle, we were covering the fact that the Trumps had gotten COVID. And then October 6th, Trump left the hospital after getting COVID. On October 7th, COVID relief implodes in Congress. On October 8th, Kamala Harris and Mike Pence were having their debate. On October 12th, there was a big debate about packing the Supreme Court because Biden started talking about doing that. Then we had Amy Coney Barrett's hearings on October 14th. Then the New York Post-Hunter Biden story dropped on October 15th. And then I published a post October 19th saying that Trump's path to getting elected was evaporating. Kudos to me. The Hunter Biden emails came out on October 20th. So after the post story, then we started talking about all the emails. Then October 22nd,

Joe Biden released his tax plan. We had our final debate October 23rd. Amy Coney Barrett got confirmed to the Supreme Court October 27th. We did an update on where COVID-19 was October 28th. And then we had our final election predictions on November 2nd. And then the election happened on November 5th. And then the election happened on November 5th. So that's all the stuff that happened in the last four weeks of October, some of which I think shaped the outcome happening, which is, I think Justice Sotomayor might retire. I haven't seen any rumblings from her saying that she would, but there's a lot of discussion and think this is just the true thing to say, that the three liberal justices are pretty liberal. I think they've been really towing that same liberal line much more so than some of the more moderate right and conservative justices have. wanting to try to protect her legacy and do what she can to help the Democrats before the election. I know there'd be a huge stink about the Supreme Court being political again, but that's sort of the waters they're in now. I don't think that would be a huge surprise. Yeah, I'm starting to see those conversations happening. those conversations happening. Just for those who are kind of unaware, I mean, she's not that old. She's 69. She's 68. But she's- 69. Yeah, 69. But she's sick. I mean, it sounds like. She's diabetic, I believe. She is traveling with

the constant health aid of some sort. And there's just questions about whether she's going to be able to do the job for another four to eight years if the next couple of administrations are Republican. And there's all the scars of what happened to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. So yeah, the Supreme Court could absolutely be a story heading into the later stages of this election as it was in 2020. And I'm also starting to see those mutterings kind of pop up. Speaking of the election, this is just going to be a heavy Trump v. Biden day, I think. I want to talk a little bit about the media coverage of Trump as we head into the final six or seven months of the election. vintage Trump media, Trump media tale where he comes out and says something, you know, delivers a speech that, you know, 15 years ago by all like historical standards would be totally

extraordinary and seem, you know, unhinged in some ways or whatever, because he's Trump and he loves, I mean, he's an entertainer at the end of the day. And he is, God damn it, he is entertaining. And he goes out and he works a crowd and he follows the mood. And you talk to anybody who's ever been to a Trump rally, and I've only ever been the one as a reporter, but they're electric, man. I mean, he knows how to put on a show. And so he goes out and he gives this speech where he, I think he talked for like an hour and a half or something, but at one point in the conversation or in the speech, he's talking about the auto industry and kind of the push to electric vehicles and how China is going to eat our lunch and all this stuff. And he basically says that if Biden gets elected,

it's going to be a bloodbath. And he's speaking specifically, I think, very clearly, contextually about the auto industry. And the head of the United Auto Workers never probably shook hands with a Republican before they're destroying. You know, Mexico has taken over a period of 30 years, 34% of the automobile manufacturing business in our country, think of it, went to Mexico. China now is building a couple of massive plants where they're going to build the cars in Mexico and think they think that they're building in Mexico right now. And you think you're going to get that? You're going to not hire Americans and you're going to sell the cars to us. Now, we're going to put a 100 percent tariff on every single car that comes across the line.

And you're not going to be able to sell those cars if I get elected. Now, if I don't get elected, it's going to be a bloodbath for the whole. That's going to be the least of it. It's going to be a bloodbath for the country. That'll be the least of it. But they're not going to sell those cars. mainstream media outlets from the New York Times to CNN, the Washington Post, whatever, they all run with this headline that Trump says, if he doesn't get elected, it's going to be a bloodbath. And the point, obviously, is to make it seem like Trump is warning that there's going to be this civil war and his people are going to come kill everybody and there's going to be blood in the streets if he doesn't get elected. And so what happens immediately is the kind of conservative media ecosystem and Trump and the middle of the ground honest journalists and commentators like me, which is how I like to think of myself, come out and say, this is bullshit framing. This is not what he was. He was not saying that there's going to be a war in the streets if he doesn't get elected. He was very obviously talking about a bloodbath in the

car and auto industry. And it starts this huge fight. But what it really does is it feeds the distrust of the mainstream media narrative, the distrust of how a lot of these journalists cover Trump. It gives him this cudgel to just beat them over the heads with about how dishonest they are and how horrible their coverage is, which he's now fundraising off of, by the way, obviously. He's sending all these emails about bloodbath and selling merch and doing the whole thing. And it's just this classic cycle where I'm like, I cannot believe that we are still doing this, that this is still, it's like he opens the trap and I can see him like huge smile on his face, MAGA hat, oversized suit, just waving them right into the trap, smile on his face. And it's like one by one by one,

these idiot headline makers and reporters and TV producers, they just do it. And it's a win. I'm sorry. It's a win for him. It's 100%. The people who are going to see that and think Trump's going to bring civil war, all those people already hate him and they'll never vote for him, whatever. The people who are in the middle trying to figure out who to trust and who's reliable, they're going to see that and go, oh shit, they're going to read the full story and see the people like me saying, oh, that's not really what he was saying. And they're going to be like, maybe Trump's right. Maybe he is really treated unfairly by the media. Maybe they are really covering him dishonestly.

And those people, they are going to be drawn closer and be more open to the message that Trump's delivering. And in my opinion, it is a huge win for him politically. And I just can't believe these kind of partisan hack reporter, TV producer people have not figured this out yet, that if they hate this guy so much, this is like the best way to help him. There's this one thing that so many left-leaning reporters do. And if you know anybody who works at MSNBC, tell them to stop doing this, which is, I think they've got some clipboard somewhere of list of things that Trump did that we don't like. And anytime there's a story where Trump says something like this bloodbath comment, they just command C, command V that into their story.

He said this will be a bloodbath. Well, remember January 6th? What happened on January 6th? Trump also did this during his election campaign in 2020. He calls people animals. Do you remember the prisons? Do you remember when he was separating families at the border? This is what he did then. And this constant refrain of we're going to go back to this list and remind you all of these things that he did. If it were in any other context, we would call that what it is, which is whataboutism. It's just going right back to all of these things that we don't like about him. And like you said, that story isn't going to play to anybody other than the people who already want to hear it. And I think the reason why it annoys me so much is I see it in emails we get. Like that's the way that people who push back on Trump write about him is they'll say,

here's a guy who did X, Y, and Z, and A, and B. And I just wonder, do you think we don't know that? Do you remember we covered these things? Like what is the point of listing all of this? I understand that you want to try to say, this is a person that I really think is dangerous, but I don't think that's the best way to make that argument. All it does is just push people further away who didn't already agree with you. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. over the top. And if you're going to take him literally, which I don't always take him literally, as people know, and everybody gets upset with me for that, frightening. I mean, in the same speech, he was talking about indemnifying all police officers and law enforcement officials in the U.S. to protect them from the quote-unquote radical left. I mean, literally giving blanket immunity to cops across the entire

country to do whatever they want and handle protesters however they want without any threat of facing legal consequences if they break the law. That's way more insane to me than him saying there's going to be a bloodbath in the auto industry and is way scarier. He would never be able to do... I don't think he could ever do that. But like the idea that he's like, oh, I'm going to come in and pardon every cop, give a federal pardon to every police officer in America, like preemptively so they can run roughshod on protesters and anybody who's like, you know, that's an insane thing for a president to say. And I think like 1% of America probably knows he says that maybe even less because everybody's running with this stupid bloodbath comment. It's the same speech. And they just like, it's like moths to the light. They have to go to this other thing. Um, so yeah, it's wild to me. And I think, you know, it's, and I want to be clear too when I say this, it's not just that people are going to see, like middle of the road people I'm talking about are going to

see the way this is covered and go, oh, maybe Trump's right. It's that he is right. Like he's proving the point that the way that he gets covered is often unfair. And I want to be be very clear about that. I think that Trump says and does things that are totally insane and over the top and unprecedented for a former president, current president, presidential candidate. I'm not trying to pull so many things about him and his language and the way he talks. They offend certain sensibilities that I have about traditions and norms. I totally agree. But the media lies

about him and concocts stories about him that are misleading just as much as he lies and tells BS stories and says stuff that's over the top. And it's not like, I don't want to frame this as like, oh, this is going to convince people that I hear a lot of other media critics kind of say like, this is exactly what Trump wants. It's going to convince people. It's like, no, this is the evidence that supports the thing that Trump is saying. This is the proof that he's right when he says that he's treated unfairly sometimes by the media. That is what that is. It's evidence to support his claim. It's not some random example that's going to play into this dynamic where more people are going to believe this lie he's telling. It's the truth. He gets this treatment from the press a lot. And it boggles my mind that they don't understand that this hurts him or that this helps him and

hurts them and hurts their credibility. I just don't understand how they're still doing this. And it's not the whole press, it's sections of the press, but it's enough that it matters. It's enough that it can be representative. You can play it as if it's a whole. I think that's the issue where I would, that I think, I don't think you disagree with that, but if I were to try to like refine the thing that you said, it's not necessarily that the entire press is as unfair to Trump as Trump, or they are as unfair as Trump is insane with the stuff that he says, as unfair as Trump is insane with the stuff that he says, but it's more that a section of the press is loud about stuff unfairly to the same degree that Trump is loud about stuff that people

get offended by. Totally. And there's tons of fair journalists out there and tons of media outlets that I think give full context and all this stuff. I don't want to talk about the media as a monolith, but the big players like the MSNBC, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, they are guilty of this very, very often. And when they make these mistakes, they almost always go one way. And I think that's just indicative of their posture towards him that I've said in the past, it should be adversarial. I think the treatment that Trump gets in a lot of ways is how every president should be treated because that is the posture that journalists should have with people in positions of power. But there's a difference between having an adversarial posture

and leaving context out to make people think something happened that didn't actually happen and it's it's worse when doing that plays into a key campaign messaging of the person you hate it just make it's like you're you're you're doing something that's actually hurting the cause that you shouldn't be pursuing but you are pursuing and you're shooting yourself in the foot anyway um it's just like, yeah. And I read this MSNBC, part of what got me so fired up was I read this MSNBC piece by Norman Eisen, who was impeachment counsel on the House Judiciary Committee. And he co-wrote it with Ruth Ben-Gayet is how I've always pronounced her name. I'm not 100% sure that's how you say

it. She's an MSNBC columnist whose stuff I see a lot. And it's like he literally... Norman Eisen is a big deal. We've quoted him in Tangle. He's quoted by a lot of people. And he says Trump's campaign and his supporters insist he was simply talking about an economic bloodbath for the automotive industry, which was his topic immediately before and after his interjection. We agree with those who think that he was not just talking about cars. Trump was implicitly threatening the nation with violence. That follows from his words and demeanor in the rest of the speech, his overall positioning as American savior from existential threats, and the broader context of his attacks on democracy. So we see that the context of all of this was that he was talking about the auto industry, but we are declaring that actually he was threatening violence to the whole country because of who he is. I mean,

there's literally a sentence in this that says, perhaps the initial reference is to the car business, but he leaves out the word industry in the first fragmentary description of the bloodbath. So he wanted him to say it was going to be an industry bloodbath instead of just saying it's going to be a bloodbath. I mean, this is insane commentary. This is unhinged writing and mental gymnastics to get your point out in a way that is so dishonest that it makes me feel like this is... It discredits people like this to me for all of time, basically. For all of time. Well, it makes you pause, I think, when you read them the next time. But that in a way is leaving out context, but in a way it's supplying other contexts. So saying, really, we should be talking about January 6th as we're discussing the auto industry. the auto industry. Yeah. It's, um, fair. That that's a good point. It's, it's, it's not necessarily omitting context as it is supplying the context that you want to be supplied. And I think like my opinion on this is that if you are a person who really believes that one candidate is going to be so obviously, obviously bad or worse than another,

cover each issue. And over time, let the people who read what you write come to that conclusion because the facts will bear it out. And then if the facts don't bear it out, then maybe you were wrong. But I think that's the benefit in treating each issue on its own. And in aggregate, if there's a trend, people will pick up on it by themselves. But the more that you try to say, hey, there's this trend, there's this trend, see this trend, people are going to tune you out. And it's actually going to be, like you said, detrimental to the thing that you're trying to do. I guess this is me counseling MSNBC on how they should try to cover Trump to Biden's benefit. And now I'm on this podcast talking about how I think Biden's going to win and how the press should cover him so that he wins. So maybe I'm part of

the problem. I was like, I don't know, maybe you should cut bait and run from me. All right. Well, speaking of cutting bait, we got to get out of here. So we should get into our, uh, our, our weekly grievances. Um, I'm already fired up. So maybe I'll go first, your grievance. We always share a little bit of a note with each other about what our, our grievance is going to be. And Ari's looks a little more complicated and complex than mine, but maybe it actually looks like an actual grievance today. We have a real one today. Yeah. I think you're shooting like 40% on most of the time. You just blame somebody for something you did, or you say something that doesn't sound like a problem.

So far. That's true. But all right. Yeah. Well, all right. My grievance is, uh,

well, well, like John run the grievance music. The airing of grievances. You couldn't smooth a silk sheet if you had a hot date with a babe. I lost my train of thought. All right. My grievance this week is not knowing how to navigate when your partner gets sick.

Phoebe's sick right now. Well, I don't know if she's sick, but she's probably over whatever she's had at this point. So your grievance is Phoebe's sick and you're mad at her. Got it. Yes. My turn? Correct. Okay.

If anybody has a solution to this, I would like to hear it. But I'll tell you what happens every time Phoebe or I get sick. One of us starts getting a little sniffly or congested or at their hearts and it's like, oh, are you sick? We're like, oh, Mickey soup, you're carrying first 12 hours, 24 hours, whatever. And then the next day they wake up and they're way more sick than they were the day before. They're very clearly coming down with a cold or something. And then we do this thing where we're like, oh, should I kiss you? Should we avoid each other a little bit? And we're like, she'll be like, oh, don't kiss me.

I'm sick. I don't want to get you sick. And then we'll maybe navigate each other for a couple of days. And then on day three, she's still sick. And those three days, like we're not doing anything because she's been really sick. And then day four, we like give up on, you know, what we call quarantine, quote unquote, now in the post COVID world. And then I immediately get sick and then I'm sick for like three or four days. And then we've just tanked our whole week where we spend no time together. We don't do anything. We like physically avoid each other

to try and not get the other person sick. And then I end up just getting sick anyway. And I can't tell if like, because of COVID also, I now know about, you know, things like, what's it called? The time period between your exposure to when you know, things like, um, oh, what's, what's it called? The time period between your exposure to when you're symptomatic. There's, there was, God, I miss the days when we were all doctors during COVID. There's like a word for that. I don't know. Whatever.

I don't remember. You know what? It's, uh, oh, it's the something period. Like the, it's like gestation. Gestation. Oh, gestation period. Something like that. You know? So like, maybe, like maybe maybe maybe i'm i don't have it maybe i'm already sick and i just don't know and then i just get sick on the third day because that's like how long it takes for symptoms of a

cold to show up but what it feels like is that we avoid each other for just enough time to like root like not spend any time together. Then I get sick anyway. And then it ends up being like a 10-day ordeal anytime one of us gets sick, where it's been almost two weeks since both of us were feeling good. And since we were spending time together, could go out on a date or do anything. And it's terrible. It sucks.

And it's like, I try all these different methods. This week, she told me she was feeling sick and I just said, fuck it. I'm just going to get it now, pretend you're not sick. And now I just haven't gotten sick. It's been like five days and I'm totally fine. So maybe that's the winning strategy. I have no idea. I don't know either. I don't have a solution. Does one of you get sick worse than the other? You know, like the meme about the man cold that like men are sick and they act like, have you ever seen that? I haven't. There's, it's like, it's a meme that just, you know, a man gets sick and he just acts like he

needs to go to the hospital and like a woman gets sick and she like, you know, a man gets sick and he just acts like he needs to go to the hospital and like a woman gets sick and she like, you know, will keep up with her chores and tough it out and go to work and whatever. And a guy gets a cold and he's like, oh my God, I'm so sick. I'm that meme. Like if I get a cold, I am like, I will complain for, I mean, I started a whole podcast segment called Air Your Grievances. So, you know, you can imagine what a runny nose does to me. It's all over.

I will bitch about that for a full week. People need to know about how hard up you are. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that's kind of, from your perspective, maybe better. Maybe that's ideal. Like, I would want to be the person who gets hit worse. For me and my relationship, Katie tends to get sicker longer, but her symptoms are less acute usually. They just take a longer time to go through. And I tend to get sick, like a freight train will just like hit me for a day and I'll be, I'll feel really bad. And the next day I'll feel better. And then I'll sort of like get 90% of the

sick in a day. And the last 10% will last a week. And I like that. Like that's nice for me, but I feel really bad when I get 80 sick. Yeah. I would prefer to get sick, like the freight train sick. I agree with that. But, uh, all right, what's your grievance? Well, it's tax season. And you know, I traditionally like tax season. I'm kind of the guy that likes to get my financial spreadsheets in order because I track all of my finances on a bi-weekly basis. I like seeing where all my money is. I like knowing how much to expect to make by the end of the year. I track finances for the household. So me and Katie, I like doing it. We have a big expense coming up where we're building a house. And in the last year, we had a lot of changes. So I was anticipating tax season being more complicated this year. So I was kind of ready

for that. Last year, we sold a house. We bought land on a loan. Then we paid out the balance of the loan. We moved states. I thought there'd be some complexity there. Actually, not at all. All of that is normal. We sold a house for under, I guess, $500,000 is the threshold of profit that you have to make before you have to declare that. So that was no big deal. Buying land, interest on the land before we closed the loan wasn't enough to matter. None of that really mattered. The thing that got me is I got six W-2s this year.

I got six. I worked two jobs. How does that happen? So at the beginning of last year, I was a software engineer for a company that got acquired. So one, I was the engineer at the small startup. So that's one. The second, we got acquired by a larger company. So that's two. And then before I left, that company broke out from the company that had acquired us and became a medium-sized company, but we were still a part of it. So that was three.

And then I left that company and I started working for Tangle full-time, which was four. But in the meantime, I was working for Tangle part-time. So was four. But in the meantime, I was working for Tangle part-time, so I was getting an independent contractor W-2 for that. So when I worked full-time, that was a change, so that's five. And then I got a W-2 for selling Salesforce stock that I got six years ago, and it counted as income because I bought that through an employee stock purchasing plan and only realized the gains later. So even though I had tax paid when I settled, I still got a W-2 as receiving on just the amount that was gained by that sale as income. income. So I had six W-2s. I had to enter three times because you do it federally and then once for Pennsylvania and then once for Vermont when we move. And there's no perfect software for entering this stuff online. I have a bunch of little grievances I'm going to leave off because those get pretty granular, but it was just all of this extra work and we shouldn't have to do any of it. We should just be able to, you shouldn't,

like if you are sending, I'm sending my income gets sent to the government, they tax it when I pay it. They already know how much I'm giving them in taxes. They already know how much income I get. All of these stubs are shared with the IRS. When tax season comes, we should just do what other countries do, which is just for income. Everything else like assets, stock sales, I'm sure that gets complicated. Let's cross that bridge when we get to it. But let's start with the easy stuff. Send me a bill for what I need to pay for my income tax. Give me an itemized list of reasons. You file your taxes to me and then I'll audit it because I'm more invested in my income, and I will send an amended return if I think you're wrong. If you owe me money,

send me a check. I'll audit it, and I'll see if I think you owe me more. That would be so much simpler. That'd be an automated process. They already have the information. Why don't we just do that? Ari Weissman, officially a Vermonter. Free him from the thumb of the federal government. I love it. Come on, Senator Sanders. Come on, Bernie. Help me out. All right. We're going to get out of here. You have thoughts, suggestions, solutions to our grievances. You can reach me, Isaac, I-S-A-A-C at readtangle.com and R-E-A-R-I at readtangle.com. We'll be back soon. See you. Peace.

Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Wall. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kabak, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime,

Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older,

and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Thank you.